Touch, Gesture and Kinaesthesia: movement workshops and talks

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Touch, Gesture and Kinaesthesia: movement workshops and talks Tickets, Multiple dates | Eventbrite

Event Description 

Durham University in collaboration with Surface Area Dance Theatre CIO (SADT) presents a weekend of movement workshop activity, delivered in partnership with SADT associate artists Annie Dearley and Christopher Fonseca.

This movement workshop focuses on touch, gesture, and kinaesthesia (the sense of movement) to explore communication with others through sensory and embodied experience.

The workshop asks:

• How can we touch others?
• How do we convey sensory experience?
• How is lived experience transformed as it moves between people, across time and space?

Alongside practical movement exploration led by Chris and Annie, a panel discussion will consider the possibility of community building through touch, drawing on a series of related workshops held in Japan (2021–23) and the United States (2025). Friday is targeted toward art/dance professionals and academics. Saturday is open to the general public.

We recommend booking tickets early, as we have limited capacity.

When:

Friday 29th May 10:30 - 17:00 (BST)

Saturday 30th May 2026 13:00 - 17:00 (BST)

Where: Dance City, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Please come in comfortable clothing.

Bio (Roundtable, 29 May, 2026)

Prof. Derek Humphreys (Université Paris Cité)

Derek HUMPHREYS is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Having conducted research into the ‘clinics of the extreme’, primarily in the fields of social vulnerability, migration and precariousness, between 2020 and 2023 he led a research programme on ‘precarious epistemology’ and creative processes in the work of Fernand Deligny, in association with the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. Full Professor of clinical psychopathology at Paris Cité University, where he directs the Master’s programme in psychology, he recently established a research programme on the work of Pierre Fédida in association with King’s College London, in 2024. As director of an interdisciplinary centre, the Centre d’Etudes du Vivant, his current research focuses on the relationship between psychoanalysis, phenomenology and creative processes.

Dr. Nicolas Schwalbe (Université Paris Cité)

Nicolas Schwalbe, adjunct lecturer at Université Paris Cité, is a franco-american clinician and researcher. He holds a BA in comparative literature from Harvard University, a Masters of Social Work from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Université Sorbonne Paris Nord. His research approaches the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis from a philosophical, clinical, and intercultural perspective. In his psychotherapeutic practice, he explores the intersection of lacanian psychoanalysis and East Asian meditative traditions. In addition to his clinical and academic work, he also performs and records regularly as a rock musician under the name Bardo Stars and with the band Happy Sundaze.

Prof. Neil Roberts (University of Edinburgh)

As Director of the Magnetic Resonance and Image Analysis Research Centre (MARIARC) in the University of Liverpool, which was built to house the UK’s first commercial Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system, Neil set up an Image Analysis Laboratory to support measurement of brain structure and function in health and disease.

In 2009 Neil was appointed Chair of Medical Physics and Imaging Science at the University of Edinburgh (UoE) where he leads research in the application of Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) for non-invasive measurement of tissue mechanical properties (i.e. virtual touch).